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I thought GOG was verboten and they lost all of their good will with their little charade.

I wasn't aware of such a thing. They apologized, in any case, and acknowledged how they handled the transition was poor. People are certainly excited about Planescape: Torment becoming available on GOG.

Its really like you missed my point entirely Will- yes these differences may exist on the "genetic" level. But what does that mean, aside from the simple fact that it does exist?

Too often the argument line goes "Look, I know you don't like this but it is the cold scientific truth that X is better than Y at Z activity! So learn to deal with it!"

When really it should be "Statistically, individuals in X group have been better than Y at Z activity, and there is a genetic basis for this." I mean there is a subtle, but real difference in the two statements.

Will I seriously hope you are not going to start arguing the Bell Curve.

no, i'm not. i didn't read the book.

but i remember when that book was published, the reflexive response from the right was to say "well yeah we know that black people are stupid" and the reflexive response from the left was to try to nibble away at his statistics or data.

and it basically seemed like an enormous exercise in confirmation bias on both sides. the left was not going to ever accept evidence of any kind of cognitive difference between races, and the right was going to do the opposite, even if it meant having to eat some crow about how smart askinazi jews are.

Yes. This is because it's pretty much goosery to accept the idea of a "smart gene" that has any sort of prominent role in how people perform. Unless you assume that most of the Irish and Jews in America just randomly mutated at the beginning of the 20th century.

"Look, all I know is that this cord was plugged into my house and your house was glowing like the freakin' sun. So, I put two and two together there and decided that you're pissing me off." -Carl Brutananadilewski

In regards to the advocates of his former empire: “I was going to have them all executed… the Royal Advocate talked me out of it.” -Shadowthrone (Emperor Kellanved)

I mean, IQ probably does have some genetic basis, but the idea that differences in IQ would somehow correspond to the entirely unscientific 19th century constructions of race is an idea so stupid it would be hilarious if it weren't so commonly believed

so why do physically provable things like tsachs or sickle-cell anemia or hypertension or blood type correspond to these entirely unscientific 19th century constructions of race?

i'm not really convinced that race is that much of a thing, or that classical groupings make much sense. but it feels to me that it's being kind of desperately disregarded.

You are missing the point in some cases- Sickle cell for instance corresponds not to "classical groupings" but more to geographical location. Which also correlates to "race".

In north america, for instance, sickle cell is slowly being selected out of the population as it confers no advantage.

The fact that sickle cell corresponds with being african american is not because they are african american, but because they came from an area where having sickle cell was a favorable trait.

Do you get the point I am making? I don't think it is very clear, but I don't know how else to phrase it.

I thought GOG was verboten and they lost all of their good will with their little charade.

I wasn't aware of such a thing. They apologized, in any case, and acknowledged how they handled the transition was poor. People are certainly excited about Planescape: Torment becoming available on GOG.

I thought GOG was verboten and they lost all of their good will with their little charade.

I wasn't aware of such a thing. They apologized, in any case, and acknowledged how they handled the transition was poor. People are certainly excited about Planescape: Torment becoming available on GOG.

Will I don't think I ever proposed a model of "Your product, only free."

I was simply wondering why, in this age of instant information transfer, it takes so long for legitimate copies of translated media to appear.

You have really ascribed a sinister motive (piracy) to my wonderings! I don't want to pirate things, I have money! I would buy them if they were released in a format that more engenders itself to the speed at which I consume media (i.e. very quickly, and impatiently)

no, i didn't mean to say that you are pirating this stuff.

but what you're asking is why they can't keep up with the pirated fansubs

and i guess my answer was "business concerns and also why try to compete directly against something that is your product but free?"

I thought GOG was verboten and they lost all of their good will with their little charade.

I wasn't aware of such a thing. They apologized, in any case, and acknowledged how they handled the transition was poor. People are certainly excited about Planescape: Torment becoming available on GOG.

but i remember when that book was published, the reflexive response from the right was to say "well yeah we know that black people are stupid" and the reflexive response from the left was to try to nibble away at his statistics or data.

"Reflexive."

You love to use that word to dismiss people's opinions.

There are people out there who study intelligence every single day, who are well-versed enough in the correlates between demographics and intelligence, that they can quickly critically assess a book like The Bell Curve.

But if they do so, you impugn them as "reflexive."

Is there some sort of waiting period? Do you want people to stroke their beards, stand around going, "Hmmm... hmmmm.... hmmmm!" before stating "hey, this idea is false?"

the point I am making is that there is a genetic basis for things like, say, Sickle Cell. But that doesn't correspond with any genetic markers for being "black" or "african american" (say, the gene that makes them produce more melanin, and thus end up darker colored)

The gene is a spontaneous mutation that can and could arise in any population, hell even "white" people can suffer from the disease! But it became fixated in african american populations because it was advantageous, not because they were black.

The point here is that you can't really draw any conclusion from this, and the fact that it correlates to "classical grouping" is more of an anomaly.

I thought GOG was verboten and they lost all of their good will with their little charade.

I wasn't aware of such a thing. They apologized, in any case, and acknowledged how they handled the transition was poor. People are certainly excited about Planescape: Torment becoming available on GOG.

Also fun fact: There is less of a genetic difference between your average black person and white person than between the entire genetic diaspora that is commonly called "black."

In short race is a construct and should not be used as a concept in anything involving genetics.

people seem to have a tendency to ascribe to genetics way way too much

some people do this, yeah

but other people have a tendency to dismiss the possibility of genetic differences way too much

Maybe among university anthropology departments in the 1970s, perhaps.

Today, pretty much all work in the social sciences is done in the bio-social-cognitive model which emphasizes the biological underpinnings of behavior (and the possible causes thereof, including but not limited to genetics).

so are the bio-social-cognitive modellers who emphasize the biological/ genetic underpinnings of poor IQ test performance of black people then doing a racist thing?

Will I don't think I ever proposed a model of "Your product, only free."

I was simply wondering why, in this age of instant information transfer, it takes so long for legitimate copies of translated media to appear.

You have really ascribed a sinister motive (piracy) to my wonderings! I don't want to pirate things, I have money! I would buy them if they were released in a format that more engenders itself to the speed at which I consume media (i.e. very quickly, and impatiently)

no, i didn't mean to say that you are pirating this stuff.

but what you're asking is why they can't keep up with the pirated fansubs

and i guess my answer was "business concerns and also why try to compete directly against something that is your product but free?"

And my answer is that a lot of other services basically do this, with large success. You dismissed this because you feel the target market isn't a desirable one.

I thought GOG was verboten and they lost all of their good will with their little charade.

I wasn't aware of such a thing. They apologized, in any case, and acknowledged how they handled the transition was poor. People are certainly excited about Planescape: Torment becoming available on GOG.

wait what?

GOG isn't dead. Long live GOG.

??????

I feel I must have missed something

GOG went down recently with a message saying 'lol market conditions' and the internet cried because they couldn't buy as many old ass games online anymore.

But it turned out to be some kind of hoax to garner attention for it's 2nd anniversary relaunch and the release of Planescape: Torment to their library.

I thought GOG was verboten and they lost all of their good will with their little charade.

I wasn't aware of such a thing. They apologized, in any case, and acknowledged how they handled the transition was poor. People are certainly excited about Planescape: Torment becoming available on GOG.

wait what?

GOG isn't dead. Long live GOG.

??????

I feel I must have missed something

They were updating their site from beta to 1.0. They just took down the site with no warning at all and decided it would be funny (or something) to tweet something that kind of implied the site was possibly getting rid of it's no DRM policy or being shut down for good.

So, small company run by the programmers has bad marketing /message control.